1. careful with recon. if you recon everything that far away too often, it will alert your opponent that something is up. I'd say recon it every once in a while while also flying recon over all kinds of far away targets
I'll definitely be changing recon around the Indian areas I can reach. I'll take a Glen to Bombay and Karachi if possible as well.
3. i wouldn't anticipate that bombing from ceylon will do you much good or attrit the allied airforce very much. what it will do is force them to garrison all the key points on the coast and to have to recapture Ceylon before they move on to landings in Sumatra/Burma/Malaya. Therefore, I'd leave enough air and ground power to keep any allied landing honest. The british carrier and amphibious fleet is weak for a long long time and any move on ceylon would require borrowing ships from the USN.
I will try to keep up the appearance of moving farther into India, thus lots of air activity. After that I believe my opponent will see I'm not going anywhere and want to soften the place up for eventual invasion. If this happens it will divert air power from China and also allow me to defend over my own bases. We'll see, but that's the idea. I will definitely want the place to be built up enough as to require some planning and major effort to take back.
4. if you move quickly, what i think would be even better would be to capture Ceylon AND Perth. The Perth area is basically a big island IF you capture that little base (i forget it's name) that's at the end of the railroad from the rest of Australia. Grabbing this region would stop the allies from moving into the Indian ocean from either direction without capturing the japanese held citadels on the "shoulders". Again you have to move fast. The startup australian force in the Perth region is weak but can be made very strong if you give them enough time.
Perth is on the list of possibilities, but my hunch is that it's a big part of my opponent's pattern of falling back to a defendable line. Iff he's already bringing troops here it will be tough to take. I'll have a look in the next month though.
5. be careful with dividing your carrier power. the mini-KB is easy meat for the USN carriers if caught without the big KB carriers. I'd say keep all your carriers together or be very very careful how you use mini-KB when it's on it's own.
The mini-KB will try to move to the area unseen and remain a force to hit any unguarded surface forces, always protected by LBA as well. It won't venture out alone. The Shoho will join it soon. It could also venture into the N PAC if his CVs are known to be far away from there.
I'd love to hear about your plan for getting to Chungking. That's no small op for sure. I forget but are you playing scenario 1 or 2? (I'll check the first post after posting this and answer my own question)
Yeah, I'm not sure I have aplan for that yet. I need to feel around and understand what areas the Chinese are building up a bit first. Now N China and the far north are the focus. Heading for Lanchow and Urumchi. Cleaning out everything in the clear, which he's evacuating, south of Sian. Testing the Sian road blockade eventually. I'll leave Yenan to wither for now.
Working a little on the Nanning area and Liuchow. This is the vector I'd prefer taking and then marching 2,500 AV or so up the road from Burma to meet this force just beneath Chunking in Kweiyang.
It's all a bit sketchy for now, and it depends on what he does to defend as well.
